


In which Ladybug and Chat Noir are True Heroes

by Yummy_Yume



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU, Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Adressing some issues, Gen, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Present Tense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-15
Updated: 2020-02-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:34:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22734940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yummy_Yume/pseuds/Yummy_Yume
Summary: Marinette is doing a better job at superheroing than she ever thought she would. Still, contacting real professionals sounds like a good idea.
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir & Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir & Nino Lahiffe
Comments: 6
Kudos: 381





	In which Ladybug and Chat Noir are True Heroes

**Author's Note:**

> Original post on [tumblr](https://yummyyume.tumblr.com/post/190076910555/in-which-ladybug-and-chat-noir-are-true-heroes)
> 
> I apologize for any spelling or grammar errors, English is not my first language.

Marinette is doing a better job at superheroing than she ever thought she would. Still, contacting real professionals sounds like a good idea. Chat is a bit reticent at first, because being Chat Noir is the only freedom he has and he doesn’t want it to end, but after she points out all the people who are suffering, he shamefully agrees to call the Justice League with her.

They don’t receive any answer, and no one shows up.

Chat is sure that it’s because there’s a world ending threat they have to take care of first, and they’ll answer as soon as they can. After the fifth’s plea for help, he doesn’t seem to really believe it either. Still, they continue to call every month.

When Chat becomes too pushy with his flirting, she sits him down, taking a day off from patrolling, and shows him a video about sexual harassment. He watches the entire thing, horrified. And then he apologizes and swears to never flirt again and he’s so, so sorry, but he really doesn’t know how to do social things or how to deal with his crush in a non-anime way, he only ever had one friend before starting school and she wasn’t the best at social interactions either and can Ladybug ever forgive him?

So, Marinette calms him down and tells him it’s alright. Everyone makes mistakes, even more so when they don’t know about the issue. And maybe he can ask his new friends about ethics and social issues. And of course, she’ll be there to answer any of his questions. _We’re partner, chaton._

So, the next day, at school, Adrien takes Nino aside so they can chat privately. He tells him about the crush he developed on this girl he works with, about the flirting and how she showed him a video on sexual harassment, and he didn’t know. So can Nino, _please_ , helps him learn this sort of things? Anything Gabriel wouldn’t have thought Adrien needed to be taught, because those were society thing that everyone learnt eventually. Except, apparently, Adrien.

Nino is horrified. He’s so going to kick Gabriel Agreste’s ass! _This is what happen when you isolate your kid!_

But Nino is also really proud of his bro for accepting that he was in the wrong and trying to educate himself.

They start by learning more about sexism together. Then Nino ropes Max, Kim, Marinette and Alya into teaching him about racism. And then, Juleka pipes up about ableism. Soon enough the whole class is involved and they’re all learning about all kind of harassments and world problems. They’re all learning things. Chloé gets involved more and more as Ladybug’s influence gets stronger. They have debates and everyone try to stay nice and not talk over each other. It doesn’t always work, but at least they stay respectful.

(And Adrien realizes that maybe he can say no too. Maybe sexual harassment is not something that only women have to deal with. And maybe child labor laws have merit. Maybe what his father is doing is really abuse. Maybe he can do something about it. He has his friends to support him and they won’t let his father just take him out of school because he disagrees with Adrien. Maybe he can be really free.)

A few weeks after the video, Chat Noir excitedly tells Ladybug about what he’s been learning with his friends, and Marinette hides a wince at the confirmation of her suspicions. Because it was definitely suspicious when Adrien asks Nino about ethics the following day of their talk about sexual harassment. She hadn’t wanted to acknowledge it and she didn’t tell Tikki, because the moment she thought about telling her kwami, she remembered with sharp clarity Chat Noir telling her “I can only be myself when I’m Chat Noir” And Marinette can’t take that away from Adrien. He’s her partner and, no matter the lack of romantic feelings, she loves him.

It also puts her crush on Adrien in question, because if she’s in love with Adrien, but not Chat Noir, then she doesn’t love Adrien in his entirety. And since Adrien is not really himself in public, then that means she’s in love with the image he’s portraying to the world, not the real him. She has a good cry, it’s her first heartbreak, but then it’s easier to let go of her crush and focus on being his friend. And Adrien looks like Christmas has come early when they have a full conversation without her stammering. The fact that he thought she didn’t like him and didn’t want to be his friend breaks her heart a little.

(She may or may not tell him she knows his identity and also shares hers, but only when they’re already transformed so their kwamis don’t know they know. Maybe.)

Fast forward a few months, Ladybug and Chat Noir are a very efficient team and the students of Miss Bustier’s class are closer than ever.

(Volpina happened and then Lila ‘leaves for Achuu’. Mrs. Rossi may be busy, but she doesn’t want her daughter’s education to fall behind and so she calls the school to know if the State will help pay for tutors while the Akuma situation is being handled and that’s how she learns that her daughter is lying to her. Again. Lila is shipped back to Italy to attend a strict boarding school.)

The Justice League still hasn’t answered.

And then Syren happens and two million people died.

It doesn’t matter that Ladybug brought them back with her cure, they still died! And they remember drowning! She read the comments on the Ladyblog, people are scared! She was aware that people died in Akuma attacks, but none have been as deadly as Syren. (And she’s so, so relieved that Ondine doesn’t remember the damage she did. She’s a teenage girl, she doesn’t need this sort of trauma to drag her down. Marinette knows from Kim that she’s already feeling enough guilt when she heard about it after everything was back to normal.)

This time, Ladybug doesn’t just call the League. She ropes Alya into helping her and she rants for a good five minutes about what is happening in Paris and _two million people died,_ _don’t you care?! Aren’t you supposed to be heroes?!_ Alya posts it to the Ladyblog and sends it to the JLA.

That how the Parisians learn that Ladybug and Chat Noir have been trying to contact the League for months and they’re all pretty angry at the dismissal. Everyone who can, send an email or call. They’re going to be heard, dammit!

.

The Justice League’s mailbox gets so suddenly flooded that all the heroes receive an alert about an emergency and they all immediately zeta-beam to the Watchtower. Diana has to finish her mission on Themyscira before she can meet everyone, but she has full faith in her teammates to hold on until she gets there.

The heroes are then confronted with the video of a ranting teenager about the flooding of Paris and all her followers.

“Paris is not flooded!” Superman seethes, looking at the monitor. “And the heat signatures are roughly the same number as yesterday!”

Some more poking and they find the Ladyblog run by a teenager with shaky videos about her classmates somehow becoming supervillain. The CGI is pretty great but it’s so cliché, it’s hilarious.

(Diana receives a ‘false alert’ message and rolls her eyes. _Men_.)

“We don’t know if she did it on purpose or not, but it can’t happen again.” Batman says.

Heroes start to zeta-beam back to their city, grumbling. 

“Someone should go put the fear of God in the kid.” Red Hood jokes, rolling his eyes (not that anyone could see).

“Thank you, Red Hood, for volunteering,” Batman replies very seriously, but Jason _knows_ that Bruce is laughing at him. Dammit!

So Red Hood zeta-beams to Paris (he doesn’t even pack a bag, it’s going to take like five minutes). Batman has sent him the address of the school the creator of the Ladyblog attends. It’ll be a good start to find the polka-dot kid.

Except that halfway to his goal, he has to stop on a rooftop because there’s a giant woman raging and fighting two really acrobatic people. One of them is the red polka-dot girl, the other is a black leather clad guy who can’t be much older than her.

“Batman, we’ve got a problem.” He coms.

“Red Hood?” and he can hear the worry in Bruce’s voice, and he feels even more shitty.

“The girl and her partner are fighting a fifteen feet-tall woman made of diamond. Half the Champs-Elysées are in rumbles. I really don’t think it’s a scam.”

And then he sees the Miraculous Cure, watches as the Champs-Elysées are restored, sees people coming back to life and understands. Jason feels sick. Because the girl in the video was a teenager and if everything she said is true then she’s been dealing with this whole shit for months and even as Robin he had Batman he could lean on.

As the two heroes jumps away, Jason races to catch up with them. Ladybug and Chat Noir are definitely teenagers and they look suspiciously at him, but he manages to convince them that he came from the JLA and can they please talk?

The Parisian heroes accept, but they were in the middle of something first so they can meet up latter at the Eiffel Tower. And then they swing away without waiting for an answer. Red Hood doesn’t chase them down. He tells everything he just saw to Batman and asks for someone to comb through the Ladyblog and give him some damn intel before it’s time to meet the kids.

Half an hour later, Jason is in jeans and playing the clueless tourist, asking what the hell is going on here.

It’s early evening when Ladybug and Chat Noir arrived at the Eiffel Tower in one long graceful jump. Jason is a bit jealous because he definitely had to use his grapping-hook to get there, but those kids can do it without assistance.

Chat Noir is super exited to meet him now that they have time to talk. Ladybug is more cautious, but she looks just as relieved.

“Are you here alone? Why did it take so long before someone came?” She asks softly.

Looking at the kids, Jason doesn’t want to tell them that no one took them seriously. They look so relieved to see him here. Obviously, the girl’s rant was powered by fear and helplessness, not any hate against the JLA. Now that he’s facing her, he thinks she looks really small in her red polka-dot suit.

_Dammit Bruce! This weird serial adopting nonsense wasn’t supposed to be inheritable!_

He owes them the truth, though. His com is transmitting live so he knows that B is listening at least, but he doesn’t really care for protocols right now.

“The JLA receive a lot of requests for assistance every day, so we have civilian workers that sort out which requests are genuine, which ones would benefit from a JLA intervention and which ones are scam.”

“And our requests were classified as scam because there’s no proof left after I cast the Cure.” She looks tired and resigned, like she had already come to this conclusion months ago. Red Hood can’t fault her that. The preliminary report he received from Red Robin showed him how smart she was. She’s also not one to suffer delusions and they’ve been fighting for months. It would have jaded anyone.

“But we send a new request for assistance every month,” Chat said, quiet and solemn beside his teammate. “It should have raised red flags that the same person sends the same request every month.”

“It should. We’ll look into it.” 

“Can you control your negative emotions?” Ladybug eventually asks. “Because we need help. Chat and I, we’re not detectives. We don’t know where to look or how to cross patterns or whatever else we would need to do in order to find Hawkmoth. We don’t have a helpful mentor to show us the way. But we’re also been fighting for months and Paris is ours. We’ll accept help gladly, but only from people who know how to control their negative emotions. We don’t want to face an akumatised hero, we have enough trouble with some civilians.”

And shit, but Jason hadn’t thought of that. From the curses in his ears, he isn’t the only one. Fuck magic, it makes everything more complicated.

“Maybe they could lend assistance from a distance?” Chat proposes, looking at Ladybug. “We could send them our data so they can look for Hawkmoth from a safe distance while we continue to take care of Akuma. And once we have a name or a location, we’ll finally put at end to it.”

“That’s a good idea, Chaton.” She raises an eyebrow in Red Hood’s direction.

“Works for me,” he shrugs. There’s a sharp ‘ _Red Hood_ ’ in his ear, but Jason ignores it. The kids are right and Jason, at least, doesn’t want to know what an akumatised Red Hood could do. “Here.” He throws an extra com at Ladybug who catches it effortlessly. “I’ll be on my way, but we’re staying in contact. And send any data you can to the JLA so we can start working on your case.”

“Thank you.”

Ladybug smiles softly, but Chat waves exuberantly before Red Hood throws his grapping-hook to the nearest building. He hopes they can catch Hawkmoth quickly, and that they’ll both continue to hold on and that they’ll both be there to see their city free. They deserve it.


End file.
